Pages

Monday, 28 July 2014

The notions of value.

It's been days since I put anything on the blog. It was no writers' block, I know for sure, but it was simply a lack of anything relevant to write on. Having written something or the other while abnegating all notions of delirium that it shall entail, I've come to realize that at least what you write shall have a bare minimum value for the writer himself. So, here I stumbled upon a subject of great fascination again, and one whose exposition I'd like to share with the limited portion of this universe's minds that I have.

While the world prices normalcy and priggishness, there are zillions of cases where men went heretic, not because of any odious treatments meted out to them, but because they simply crossed paths with some epiphany, some revelation. Since time immemorial, we've got cases of men who either refuted common but consecrated principles only to see their head quashed on the guillotine, or because the idea of following a blind herd did not intrigue them anymore. People even resorted to abdication of possessions or power that would have been coveted by many, including agnates. So what is it that could drive this desire and this discombobulating knack to go awry, even when you were not expected to.

The first of these observations date back to the age when aristocracy was prevalent. While on one extreme we had kings who would revoke their throne for weird reasons ranging from assignations with the daughter of a mere factotum to pursuits that were not aligned while living a scion. We also had instances of the noble posterity turning hostile towards the rule and doing everything possible to knock them off, including arraigning with falsified allegations of treason or better off, silent execution. As a matter of fact, most of these incidents were running up in parallel, and were witnessed in some of the most decorous of kingdoms.

The second one has been pretty recent and has surely been more than stupefying. Religions with opposite expositions have always been at loggerheads, but from time and again, skirmishes and mere vituperation turn in rancorous battles. Of what's its worth, religions never succumb, the practitioners do. More mesmerizing is the fact that the parish eventually perishes, only to be born a partisan again and only to serve the hegemony of a written epic whose veracity has been deemed indelible by none other than the harbingers of that deviousness and whose sole purpose shall be the persistence of the religion.

Once again, it's a question of the same odds at battle. Men, with due subservience, willing to go down fighting for a force so powerful enough that it even prevents them from debating on its presence, no matter how much it may have debilitated them already. And on the other hand, are the gentry whose birth or deeds have led them to assume positions of prodigious power and authority, and whose decisions and whips are to be acquiesced to, with the promise of guaranteed action being taken in case of non-compliance. Once again contrasting emotions at play.

So, what's it's worth this time, the truce at hand. So powerful and staunch is the fear of desacralization that minions are ready to fall off the perch, relinquishing all that they leave behind, including a few human beings who are forced to live a life of ignominy and depravity. And then we have the demigods who, with age old missives, have such enormous powers to protect the integrity of a belief manifestation, that they renounce all human emotion and lead men down a slovenly path, one that promises vague resurrection at the price of total destruction.

So, what's it's worth then? What is it that drives this motility to take opposite roads? What is this blinding instinct which overpowers commonsense and makes us associate heterodoxy to everything that challenges a notion. What is value for everyone and why is it held in batons of opposite polarity so often. Why is it that ones deride the ease while others censure derision or non derision. What are our notions of compliance? And finally, what are our notions of value?